Wikisource:No open proxies

This page documents an official policy on Wikisource. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow. Except for minor edits, please make use of the discussion page to propose changes to this policy.

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This policy is copied from No open proxies on Meta-Wiki. Edits should be made to that page, or they will be lost in the next update.

This page provides information about prohibition on open proxies on Wikisource and other Wikimedia projects. It was discussed in February 2004, and the policy page was created in March 2006. (If you have been blocked as an open proxy, please see Help:blocked.)

Policy

Open or anonymising proxies may be blocked for any period at any time. While this may affect legitimate users, they are not the intended targets and may freely use proxies until those are blocked. No restrictions are placed on reading Wikisource through an open or anonymous proxy.

Proxies are left open due to deliberate or inadvertent configuration or because hackers have changed the configuration. Non-static IP addresses or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies should typically be blocked for a shorter period of time, as it likely the IP address will eventually be transferred or dynamically reassigned, or the open proxy closed. Once closed, the IP address should be unblocked.

Rationale

Although Wikisource encourages anyone in the world to contribute, such proxies are often used abusively. Since MediaWiki (the wiki software) depends on IP addresses for administrator intervention against abuse, open proxies allow users to completely circumvent administrators. The use of scripts or bots allow malicious users to rapidly rotate IP addresses, causing continuous disruption that cannot be stopped by helpless administrators. Several such attacks have ocurred on Wikimedia projects, causing heavy disruption and occupying administrators who would otherwise deal with other concerns.

This policy is known to cause difficulty for some editors, who must use open proxies to circumvent censorship where they live; a well-known example is the government of the People's Republic of China, which sporadically attempts to prevent its citizens from reading or editing Wikipedia. Chinese readers who wish to edit Wikisource should read advice to users using anonymizing proxies to bypass the Great Firewall.

Policy

Rationale

See also